From keithw Tue Jul 21 19:01:29 1998 From: Keith Wansbrough To: KeithNet List Date: Tue, 21 Jul 1998 19:01:29 BST Subject: KeithNet: Southward ho... MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Keith's own hand-crafted bulk mailer v1.1 [1998-04-23] Hopefully I've given you all enough time to digest the other two parts; it's time for me to bring you all right up to date. Again, for administrivia see the previous message. On Wednesday the first of July I returned to Glasgow. Strangely enough, it was summer in Glasgow! Warm, sunny... all the things I had come not to expect from the west of Scotland. Went back to my flat, changed into *shorts* (!! shock horror !!) for the first time in over a year I think (apart from when tramping), collapsed for a while, and then headed to Safeway to begin restocking the kitchen. The next day I staggered in to the CS department, complaining to everyone that I needed a holiday to recover from my holiday (and not receiving *any* sympathy from *anyone* :-( ), and started ploughing through my huge pile of emails. This took a large part of the day. I then headed out -- my officemate Joy and a couple of my friends have moved into a new flat, half an hour's walk from the department (but in exactly the wrong direction: exactly 45 mins walk from my flat on a good day) and overshadowed by two extremely apocalyptic-looking gasometers. Despite my nearly collapsing on the way in the unaccustomed heat, I liked their flat. Certainly painting the walls was a good idea -- pink is *not* a good colour! It was great to be `home' again. Over the last nine months, Glasgow has certainly become `home' to me. I know the city, I know how to get around it, where to buy things, where the good parks and walks are. I've got good friends here; everyone speaks a familiar accent; I've got a good church to go to. After a few weeks of travelling around, even though it's fun, I start to feel dislocated and isolated, and coming back to somewhere I belong is a good feeling. Unfortunately, no sooner had I arrived (or so it felt) than I had to leave again. As you will all be aware, I've been considering moving down to Cambridge. On Monday 6th (after having been back for just four days) I caught the train down to Cambridge to check it out. Left at 1000 (as usual cutting it extremely fine -- at 0930 I was still in the department printing out papers to take down with me -- but I made it in time). I arrived in Cambridge about 1615. For a change, I made constructive use of the travelling time: wrote out a proof of something for my thesis work, and then spent ages looking through the list of Cambridge colleges (I had both the official and alternative guides) and trying to pick my first, second, and third choices. Cambridge is a curious city. It is a university town, and everything revolves around the university. Since the university was established in the thirteenth century, the streets are mediaevally narrow, and they're lined with tall old university and college buildings. The centre is just a mess of these buildings crammed in together, but outside this are some large areas of park land, and running through this is the river Cam (or Granta, as it is sometimes still known). A lot of the park land belongs to various colleges and is not publically accessible; the parts that are seem mainly to be either unadorned lawns, or meadows: no parks in the Albert Park or Auckland Domain or Kelvingrove Park sense of the word. It also features lots of tourists. It has a population of about 100 000, but gets 4 000 000 tourists every year! A quick calculation suggests that in the main tourist areas one encounters on average something like one tourist every seven metres (and this tallies with my experience). Of course, it's worse than this: they have a lot more tourists in summer than in winter. Ouch. Some of the tourists even make it into the computing department, to see the famous coffee machine. A word about the colleges is in order. The colleges are entirely autonomous, and exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship with the university. It's probably easiest to excerpt the official line: ``The university was established in about 1209 to examine and to confer Degrees. The first Colleges ... were established later, from 1284, principally to teach and house students at all levels. Today, the Colleges are mainly concerned with the teaching of their undergraduates and the academic support of both graduate and undergraduate students, and of scholars and research workers of outstanding merit. In this centure the role of the University has hugely expanded through the provision of facilities, such as teachign and research laboratories, which it is practically possible only to provide centrally. The University ... provide[s] the formal teaching ... The Colleges supplement [this] with supervisions, given by Fellows or others appointed by the College, and each College also provides library and other learning resources exclusively for its own members.'' So essentially the colleges provide tutorial assistance, accomodation, and a social network, and the university provides formal teaching and administers degrees. A lot of the facilities provided by the AUSA in Auckland are provided by the college or under the auspices of the college at Cambridge. One of the curious features of this system immediately apparent to the casual walker-around-Cambridge is that each college has its own chapel. These chapels tend towards cathedral scale, and in the city centre occur at a rate approaching one per block. The resulting streetscape is extremely claustrophobic! In fact claustrophobia was certainly something I sensed in Cambridge, enhanced by the narrow streets, the old buildings, and Cambridge's topographical poverty -- it's *totally* flat. This latter is an extreme concern to one brought up amongst Auckland's 48 volcanic cones... I find Glasgow a flat city, but compared to Cambridge it's positively mountainous! I need to be able to lie on a green slope and gaze out over the city spread out beneath me, and that's not possible in Cambridge. Ah well. I spent the Monday evening wandering around and getting a feel for the city, and then locating dinner (I'd *totally* had enough of pizza by this stage, of course, so I spent a long time searching for real fish and chips -- and it's not a ``fish supper'' in England, it's fish and chips). On the Tuesday I headed in to the Computing Laboratory (as the University of Cambridge CS dept is called, no doubt for historical reasons). This was an exciting experience. The start wasn't promising -- strong reminders of Auckland's Carpark 40 as I walked up to the door. But my potential supervisor down there (Andy Pitts) seems really cool, and he's doing some *very* interesting stuff that has at least a potential connection with my research so far. He's also quite interested in my work. I can see some interesting directions my thesis work could take with him. He introduced me to a couple of others in the department, and they were also interested in what I've done so far. One of them also passed on the information that my Masters work has been noticed and inspired further developments in action semantics -- this was encouraging, because I'd thought it had gone the way of far too much research, and been forgotten. This I will have to chase up. We had lunch, and discussed the department and my research and Andy's research and the department's relationship with Microsoft Research and various other relevant things. I came out of the meeting feeling that moving to Cambridge was clearly the right thing to do -- in fact, feeling quite excited about it. On the other hand, I still felt extremely sad to be leaving Glasgow, a place that I've made my second home and settled into. Clearly it will be an adjustment to move down to Cambridge -- it will take a while to learn to like it, despite its lack of proper parks and its flatness. I console myself with the fact that Glasgow didn't look too inviting when I first arrived, either, but it's grown on me. So I've chosen to move down to Cambridge. Thanks to everyone who mailed me with suggestions and advice -- it was all helpful to me as I thought about it over the last few months, and while in Sweden, and then while in Cambridge checking it all out. Thanks for your prayers too. In a sense I've been through this once, and since God did such a good job of looking after me and preparing the way for me last October, I am sure he can do the same again. I can see how I've grown in how much less scary it is this time around (but it still is scary). On the Wednesday I caught the train back up (in the afternoon -- but of course most of the museums were closed in the mornings; my luck is always the same!). I was reminded again as the train went through Newcastle of how much Glasgow is home... the train filled with Scottish accents discussing kilts for a wedding they were attending and I suddenly realised I'd been missing this for a month... this at last was familiar territory again. On Thursday I went in to the department and again tried to do some work. Still catching up, though. That evening I wrote the two KeithNets I sent earlier (but not this one, which is the *real* reason I haven't sent it until now). Spent a happy weekend with friends... literally, in one sense: the new series of _Friends_ is on public TV at last, and we watched the first episode. I also went to another ceilidh (I've stopped counting how many I've been to now), simultaneous with the 3rd/4th-place playoff for the World Cup (yes, yay for Croatia, but I think Holland were very unlucky in the semi). And I saw an excellent exhibition of watercolours (_Windows on the West_) at the People's Palace, incredibly detailed paintings of Glasgow tenement houses and theatres and streetscapes and buildings and Glasgow *people*. Recommended. Last week was a mad frantic rush working on the paper I am submitting to POPL. The submission deadline is Friday, and it has been a *lot* of work (me being away so much hasn't helped!). I'm still working on it (no I'm not, I'm working on this KeithNet...), and it's (just) on target. In between work on the paper, I've managed to farewell a German friend, to fill out a ridiculous amount of paperwork for my Cambridge application (including an authenticated copy of my degree certificate -- those of you who've graduated from Auckland will have an idea of the hassle this was), clean the kitchen (the flat being half-empty means we're less enthusiastic about cleaning the flat, but it does need it sometimes), and spend a number of evenings with friends (I've desperately needed the destressing time!). After a crazy weekend last weekend, staying up far too late every night and getting up far too early in the mornings (and attending several parties and one wedding -- congrats Lesli and Gordon!), this week has started to get saner as my paper comes together. This is a good thing. On Friday I intend to celebrate my birthday (hint, hint!) -- a few days early since people are going to be away. After that I can relax a bit, although I still have to write the tech report that goes with the paper. Maybe I'll even manage to be more regular with these KeithNets! You never know. Time to go... hope most of you are above water as you read this (maybe you NZers will feel better if I tell you that it's been pouring down here for the last week or so too -- although we've only had surface flooding). Take care! Love and hugs, --KW 8-) ---- PS: In the last message I wanted to use some European characters but decided not to since I wasn't sure you could all see them on your computers. For future reference, I'm sending another message after this one with them in. Please tell me if you don't get it at all, or if you do, whether it is corrupted in any way, so I know for future reference. PPS: Please do print this out and show it to anyone you know who would like to see it and doesn't have email. -- : Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) -------------------------: : PhD Student, Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Scotland. : : Native of Antipodean Auckland, New Zealand: 174d47' E, 36d55' S. : : http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~keithw/ mailto:keithw@dcs.gla.ac.uk : :----------------------------------------------------------------------: